Churchill Permits Zionists to Announce He Still Favors Jewish Homeland in Palestine

February 4, 1944

WASHINGTON (Feb. 3)

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, after a recent interview with Zionist leaders, gave them permission to quote him as still favoring the Balfour Declaration which provides for the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, chairman of the American Zionist Emergency Council revealed here today.

Dr. Silver made this disclosure at a press luncheon at which it was learned that the House Foreign Affairs Committee would begin open hearings next Tuesday on the resolution pending in Congress favoring free immigration into Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth there. Dr. Silver said he anticipated no organized opposition to the resolution in either house of Congress.

Dr. Silver also disclosed that he had visited the Turkish embassy in Washington in an effort to increase the number of Jews permitted to pass through Turkey on their way to Palestine. This number is now limited to 400 a month, he said. He attributed British opposition to the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth to a group of officials within the British civil service, and predicted that a change in British policy would soon come. He pointed out that Secretary of State Cordell Hull had expressed himself publicly as supporting the position of the United States in favor of the Balfour Declaration.